Caption:
Gai Ancestor thought that China's greatness could not be changed in a moment, so he wanted to first take Xiang Province as a model for the whole country, and if the whole country reformed, it would be led by the central government.
At that time, the central government really belonged to Nalahou, and if Nala did not want to change the old system, the Guangxu Emperor had no power, and it provoked conflicts between mother and child, and the overall situation was unmanageable.
----- Chen Yinke, "The Relationship between the Pengshu Coup and the Ancestral Emperor"
After more than forty years of ups and downs in the eunuch sea, Chen Baozhen (1831-1900) finally became a local feudal official. In the twenty-first year of Guangxu (1895), at the recommendation of Rong Lu, the imperial court appointed him as the governor of Hunan. What awaits him?
At this time, a drought was raging in Hunan, and a large number of victims were in urgent need of relief. After Chen Baozhen took office, he immediately and strictly ordered local traders to prohibit grain trafficking out of the country; this drought was the most serious in Liuyang and other places. Some lawless people took advantage of the opportunity to stir up trouble, and he boldly used Ouyang Zhonghu, a local squire who was deeply respected by the people, to preside over the local relief work; because the imperial court lost the war against Japan, the amount of disaster relief funds that could be allocated was limited, so Chen Baozhen used the interpersonal network in the official field to ask for help from the officials of Linxian Province; in the late Qing Dynasty, greed became a common practice, which greatly increased the difficulty of disaster relief. Chen Baozhen had been in the sea for a long time and knew the importance of the rule of officials. He vigorously straightened out the bureaucracy, dismissed more than twenty incompetent officials, and employed a group of talented magi. It was with their help that the disaster in Hunan was alleviated.
Chen Baozhen obeyed Zeng Guofan's way of governing the country and Guo Songtao's idea of restoration. For Hunan people, he spoke highly: "Its soldiers are bold and courageous, and negative gas is available", plus Hunan's "coal, iron and hardware production", if it is carefully managed, it can become the foundation of the prosperity and strength of the whole of China. After the disaster was controlled, Chen Baozhen immediately threw most of it into the restoration cause in Hunan.
In February 1896, he established the Mining Bureau in Changsha. At the same time, a series of measures were introduced to encourage people to invest in industry and commerce. The first telegraph office was set up in Hunan and a special telegraph line to Hubei was set up, which laid the foundation for Hunan's future take-off.
In March 1897, the Xiangxue New Paper (later renamed xiangxue journal) was founded, with Tang Caichang and Tan Si as the main authors. In addition to introducing Western scientific knowledge, the newspaper also promoted a constitutional monarchy, and Chen Baozhen ordered states and counties to subscribe to it to open up the atmosphere.
In order to enlighten the people's wisdom, Chen Baozhen also founded the School of Current Affairs, with Xiong Xiling as the regency, and hired Liang Qichao as a teacher. The sons of Sanxiang, such as Cai Yi, Zhang Shizhao, Yang Shuda and others, successively studied here.
During the period of the reform of the law, most of the governors and inspectors in various localities took a wait-and-see attitude toward the change of the law. Chen Baozhen was the only local governor who supported Guangxu. Think of that year, the British and French coalition army burned the Yuanmingyuan, Chen Baozhen happened to be drinking in a restaurant in the capital, seeing the fire soaring in the sky, he couldn't help but clap the table number, and the people next to him were all moved. "After that, he ruled the army and the people, and he knew that the old Law of China could not be changed." After that, he befriended Guo Songtao, who was an envoy to England. At that time, Guo was regarded as a traitor and a traitor by the old scholars, and everyone wanted to kill him quickly. Chen Baozhen admired him and thought that his views were far better than the customs. In 1884, he also wrote a preface to Feng Guifen's book "Protest at the School of Lulu", which advocated the change of law. When the news of the defeat of Jia Wu came, Chen Baozhen cried bitterly that "there is no way to think of the country" and repeatedly criticized Chen's gains and losses.
However, unlike Kang, Liang, Tan and others, Chen Baozhen had worked with Zeng Guofan, Zhang Zhidong and other famous ministers, had decades of experience in politics, and although he supported the restoration, he also understood the emperor's eagerness to advocate rapid change and total change. Chen Yinke said this very clearly in "After Reading Wu Qichang's Biography of Liang Qichao". He said that the people who participated in the change of law at that time had two completely different ideological sources, one was the radical faction represented by Kang Youwei, "the study of the gongyang of the present dynasty, and the reform of Confucius to change the law." The other faction is the pragmatic faction from Guo Songtao to his grandfather and father, "those who have tried to use the mirror of the Western Kingdom to change the old law of Shenzhou", and the two factions should not be confused.
In the blink of an eye, it was the year of Penghu.
In March of that year, the Xiang Bao published Yi Nai, a student of the Shiwu Academy, "China Should Be Weak as Strong", in which the radical argument caused an uproar, and Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang, also called Chen Baozhen to ask him to explain.
Although Chen Baozhen did not agree with the idea of radical change in his heart, after all, the two were in the same camp of restoration, and for the sake of the overall situation, he would still defend Kang Youwei and others. At that time, the controversy over Kang Youwei in the capital was boiling, and the cause was his "Confucius Reform Examination". In May of that year, Chen Baozhen put on a fold, and although Kang Youwei's words were inappropriate, "when Baidu is renovating and trying to strengthen itself, the promise of a thousand people is not as good as the advice of a soldier." Therefore, he asked the emperor to send down Kang Youwei and order him to destroy the Confucius Reform Examination on his own, "not only because of the dispute between right and wrong, but also because of the non-moral progress." In the accompanying film, he states that he and Kang Youwei have never met, but read his arguments and consider him a "talent who understands the times".
In August of the same year, Empress Dowager Cixi re-appointed the government. Tan Sitong, Lin Xu, Liu Guangdi, Yang Rui, Yang Shenxiu, Kang Guangren and six others were killed. Chen Baozhen was also dismissed from his post because he had recommended Tan Sitong, Yang Rui, and others, and returned to Jiangxi to live idly. The Hunan New Deal he painstakingly managed was in vain.
Huang Zunxian, a witness to the Hunan New Deal, said when analyzing the reasons for the failure of the Penghu Reform Law: "The disease accumulated over hundreds of years must be slowly cured. This failure was mainly caused by the new faction's demand for speed. If there is a class of learned, methodical, experienced, and cultivated elders who come out to preside, this will certainly not be the case. "
Chen Baozhen, who was deposed, returned to Jiangxi with his family. In just over a year, he died suddenly at the age of 69. For his father's death, Chen Sanli once had a poem "Orphans still recognize the Cries road, and sooner or later the West Mountain will be remembered", as if there is unspeakable pain. Later, after scholars examined it, Chen Baozhen was given death by Empress Dowager Cixi. Because he had been a local inspector, he was once a powerful figure, especially Cixi was jealous, and he had to be physically destroyed in order to be at ease. Of course, Chen Sanli also recorded in his diary that his father had been ill since he left his post and returned to his hometown, so he may have died of illness. The death of Chen Baozhen is still a historical mystery to be solved.